Tuesday, December 18, 2018

John Cena Hypes Upcoming Ring Return, WWE RAW Viewership Up

- Monday's WWE RAW episode, featuring the fallout from WWE TLC plus an advertised return by Vince McMahon, drew 2.547 million viewers.
This week's viewership is up 16% from last week's 2.194 million viewers, which was the lowest RAW viewership in show history. This is the best RAW viewership since the October 22 episode, which drew 2.548. That episode opened with Roman Reigns relinquishing the WWE Universal Title and announcing his second battle with leukemia.

- John Cena took to Twitter today to hype his upcoming WWE ring return at SmackDown and RAW live events.

Cena's upcoming run is scheduled to begin at the live event at Madison Square Garden in New York City on Wednesday, December 26, and wrap on Monday, January 14 at the RAW TV show in Memphis, Tennessee at the FedExForum. He will work blue and red brand shows in December but the January live events are all red brand dates.

Cena recently revealed that his upcoming return is for live events only, not the RAW or SmackDown TV shows. It's worth noting that Cena is still scheduled to work the January 7 RAW in Orlando, FL at the Amway Center and the January 14 RAW in Memphis.

The Amway Center has Cena scheduled for one of the dark main events that night, a six-man match with Elias and Finn Balor against Baron Corbin, Bobby Lashley and Drew McIntyre. Cena is advertised for various matches and segments at the other RAW and SmackDown live events, such as MizTV with The Miz in Long Island, NY and singles matches with The Miz in Baltimore, MD and Tampa, FL. Cena is scheduled to team with Rey Mysterio to face Randy Orton and WWE United States Champion Shinsuke Nakamura at the December 29 live event in Pittsburgh. Cena was scheduled to team with Balor to face McIntyre and Dolph Ziggler at MSG, but that match was nixed when Drew split with Ziggler.

"I was given the choice of taking one month to catch my breath and live what I would call a normal life. It took me about two seconds to turn that down. On December 26th, I return to Madison Square Garden and do a nice live event run with the WWE right up through the middle of January," Cena told The Toronto Sun. "None of these shows are televised. I'm literally just doing it because I want to get back to a place I feel most comfortable and to working with people I can call my family. And I want to have some fun."

Cena stars in the "Bumblebee" Transformers spinoff movie that hits theaters this weekend.